Missing iSyndica

posted onOctober 27, 2010

I feel like a drug addict going through withdrawal. It’s not so much that I miss the ability to upload once and “syndicate everywhere” (I do miss that), more it’s a matter of missing the analytics. Being able to log in every single day to check my sales stats not only helped me to track things, but it gave me a piece of mind knowing that somewhere I sold at least 1 item each day.

I’ve added the picNiche Toolbar to Firefox which does let me track sales on a number of sites, but a lot of the sites I use are missing and I’m not good enough with regular expressions to add those myself. Additionally, there’s no history… there’s no total across all sites… it’s very frustrating.

While I would love to see someone else do something similar to iSyndica, the players who have talked about it all say that Video is their nemesis. The amount 0f storage space needed is apparently expensive and those expenses have to be passed on to the customer. So it’s not likely we’ll see anything similar to iSyndica’s upload capabilities for video that is affordable. I can probably live with that… I’ve gotten back into a routine for uploading files to multiple sites from my computer using a series of scripts that monitors an empty folder on my computer (I stick a file in the folder and my scripts automatically upload the file to numerous sites for me.)

What I miss more than anything is the analytics. And I hope that Hugo from iSyndica sees this post and considers bringing back a new service which just does tracking the way iSyndica did. Such a service would be FAR CHEAPER to run than iSyndica since there would be no file storage necessary beyond the database. And it’s something I’d pay $10 to $15 a month for depending on how far it went.

First, it would need to support all of the sites that iSyndica did (which was 90% of the MicroStock industry) with regular updates several times a day. The report would include how many files were downloaded from each supported site and the total revenue. With support for historical data and basic projection of revenues each month. All of this is what iSyndica did. What it also needs is the ability to track portfolios. I want to have a complete list of every file I have uploaded at every site and the ability to track which files are selling where. More importantly, I’d like to know which files I still need to upload to various sites and which files were rejected (so I don’t attempt to upload them again). I imagine this would mostly be a manual process, but I’m fine with that as long as I can view and edit the data myself.

Unlike iSyndica which was primarily for file distribution, such a tracking site could run on relatively cheap hosting (you can get unlimited bandwidth/unlimited database for around $20 a month on many reputable web hosts). The main expense would be a programmer to write all the code, add new features, and keeping it maintained. But I would imagine such a site would have hundreds if not thousands of supporters which would cover the cost of a full time programmer and provide a hefty profit.

I know there are a few other “stats” sites out there, but none of them go as far as iSyndica did with their stats and NONE of them support as many sites as iSyndica did (most don’t support video tracking).

More than I want a replacement for iSyndica’s easy uploading and distribution… I want a site to better track my Microstock statistics. That is something I’d subscribe to “in a New York minute”.

2 Responses to “Missing iSyndica”

Hold your breath just a little longer, it’s coming soon. The stats will be from a combination of picNiche toolbar and the picWorkflow system so you won’t have to pay for them.
Drop me a mail if you’d like a signup code to check out where it’s getting to so far 🙂

Dave – It’s always rewarding to read what you have to say about iSyndica. The code and anything related to iSyndica are unfortunately out of my control. Seb and his dev team did a great job rolling out such a large support. I believe things could be replicated but as I’m sure Bob Davies is finding out, maintenance is cumbersome and you can never support enough agencies.